Ted has 15+ years experience in for-profit and non-profit business management. Ted is Founder and Principal at West Monument Consulting LLC, a consulting firm which provides business management and planning services to organizations working in biotech as well as global health and development. Ted also served for 7+ years as a Business and R&D Director at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) where he helped build a global R&D program operating in 20+ countries. Before working at IAVI, Ted served as a Technology and Health Equity Analyst at Carnegie Capital a privately held investment firm. Ted has an MBA in Finance/ Marketing from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, an MPH in Global Health from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a BA (Honors) in History from Grinnell College.

Mekbib Gemeda serves as the Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion at Eastern Virginia Medical Sschool (EVMS). He is charged with spearheading efforts to build institutional capacity and human capital to address health equity and workforce diversity gaps that EVMS strives to impact as it seeks to become the most community-oriented school of medicine and health professions in the United States.

To that end, Mekbib oversees EVMS Diversity and Inclusion, which supports efforts to integrate diversity and inclusion as a strategic priority across the mission areas of education, patient care and research at EVMS. Its initiatives focus on supporting the integration of cultural competency and community health in the medical and health professions curriculum; developing and implementing programs to enhance diversity among students, residents, faculty and staff; and advancing community engagement and partnership.

Prior to joining EVMS, Mekbib served for eight years as the Assistant Dean for Diversity Affairs and Community Health and the founding Director of the Center for the Health of the African Diaspora at New York University School of Medicine. He implemented successful programs at NYU to increase diversity among students, residents, faculty and leadership, and he established pipeline and community engagement initiatives. He also led efforts to integrate into the core medical curriculum cultural competency and a social determinant framework.

Mekbib has more than a decade of experience in national and local efforts to reduce health disparities and increase diversity in the biomedical workforce. He was involved in developing a robust NIH-supported biomedical research center and a nationally recognized faculty and graduate-student recruitment and retention program at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He was also involved in developing the largest national online network of minorities in science, justgarciahill.org.

Demetri Blanas MD, MPH, is a medical resident in the Institute For Family Health Harlem Residency in Family Medicine program. He brings to ASC’s board expertise in community-based health programming and research and has published and obtained funding for HIV, hepatitis B, and malaria programs and research in Harlem and Senegal. He received a medical degree from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he also obtained a Masters in Public Health degree, and obtained a Bachelor’s of the Arts at Columbia University majoring in Comparative Literature and Environmental Biology. He has also completed a Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellow, and is a National Health Service Corps Scholar.

'Uzo' Okoye is an attorney with the law firm of Gibbons P.C. and concentrates her practice in the areas of commercial, construction, and environmental litigation in New York and New Jersey. She is also licensed to practice law in her native Liberia. Uzo is involved in a number of charitable organizations including African Services Committee, Inc. and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Uzo is a graduate of the American University (B.S.); Polytechnic University, now Polytechnic Institute of N.Y.U. (M.S.); and Rutgers School of Law (J.D.).